My first Solo project was completed and cataloged yesterday, so it’s available for listening. The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story is a work by H Rider Haggard.
Mahatma was inspired by Haggard’s interest in spiritualism, and particularly by the ideas of previous lives and reincarnation, and they form the background of the story. The narrator, who adopts the alias Mahatma on the spur of the moment, has a soul which is at least 8000 years old. He has learned enough that he is allowed to visit the Great White Road that the dead travel between existences. Here, he observes people whom he has known, but he sees into their hearts, often discovering that they were not what they had seemed to be. He is quite surprised when a hare appears on the Road, for he has only seen one animal on it before, itself an extraordinary boon. The hare relates his life’s story, when the Lord of the estate on which he had lived appears. A discussion follows on hunting and man’s desire to kill for sport. The discussion is not resolved by the author, but he does have an opinion on which of the two is justified in his claim. Total run time for this version is 2:17:21.
My limited research on Haggard hasn’t suggested he was what we would today call an animal rights activist. He was active in land reform in the British Empire, but seemingly more with an eye to breaking up large landholdings so that more people might own/farm their own properties.
Haggard is perhaps best known as the creator of Allan Quatermain. Quatermain is a big game hunter and adventurer in Africa, first introduced in the novel King Solomon’s Mines. This novel has been adapted for film several times; Quatermain also appears as a character in the 2003 movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, portrayed by Sean Connery.